okay so you all know the dwar from AoD that can reduce any damage by 1 ?!...now put him up against swallow a abillity.

If swallowed, he can't be killed because of the ability that always negates 1 damage, from whatever the source.

Also if a ferox hits him and deals only 1 damage, can his ability prevent it, such I cannot add a bleed token ?! (I am talking about only 1 damage, damage which would anyway be denied by his armor).

And in referance to the previous question, can he use that ability, and the shield in case I deal 2 wounds, to neglect a bleed token ?

---

After the first RtL dungeon the score is 14 - 17 (heroes - Overlord) and they had so much cash they bought the boat and the staff of wild ? can they buy both of them in the same turn ? Also if they flee the dungeon does that end the week ? How do you feel about heroes leaving the dungeon and then just spending time Restocking by buying pots and gear + upgrades (cause thats what they basically did)?

Also the new rule about the heroes being forced to flee the dungeon if you go trough the deck TWICE in one dungeon level...how is that possible with all the expansions ?!

Just some of my first opinions.

If your wondering, I'm playing against:

• The AoD Dwarf
• Runewitch Astara
• Orc with +2 if out of LoS
• Teleporting Mage

Sorry for the names, never bother to remember em.

I'm the Beastman Lord (random draw) with the Darkness plot (random again).

I got my first upgrade Bloodthirst so all beast man would get a black die. And also planning to get the alric familly soon togather (starting with the girl 11-3 = 8 conquest, and then the other one who by his wording 10 - 10 = 0 conquest...or am I doing something wrong ?!)

Just going to chime in and agree with you.

Ran my first RTL session last night: Final score: Overlord 7 Party 23, and they fled the final Monster. Also ended up with 4400 gold , I got abused by Feat cards non-stop all night long.

Don't see how you'd ever go through the deck twice in a dungeon level, heck it's almost impossible to do twice over all 3 levels.

Unless I'm sorely mistaken, Bleed doesn't need to score a wound, just a hit. Even if the damage is zero after armour, place a Bleed token.

Yeah but the roll only dealt 1 wound (on the dice) and he used Corbins abillity to ignore it (and thats not armor + shield can do that too) so if anyone can help please please do.

jazzjr said:

You are not supposed to. Its a rule purely to stop a special hero cheat of staying in the dungeon forever and so bringing on the final battle before the OL is ready after the OL cycles his deck 200 times.

The old rule of cycling 3 times in an entire dungeon could get a little close for comfort with very slow parties on tough 4-level dungeons (imagine fighting all the way through a legendary dungeon and just as you are about to win you get kicked out - after having suffered massive CT losses already in the attempt to get the prize). Especially if the OL had focused on deck cycling (there are some treachery cards that help, as well as some upgrades) and got Evil Genius out early.

StarBurn said:

Corbon suffers 1 less wound, not one less damage. The attack only has to do 1 damage for bleed etc to kick in. Corbin cannot prevent that.
That should answer your other questions on that part as well - although Corbin (or shields) can't prevent the bleed token being placed, they can cancel the actual wounds done by the bleed token at the start of the next turn.

His ability will mean he cannot be killed in the stomach though, although he can be reduced to one final wound. Guess what, sometimes the unique hero specials can be really useful!
So don't swallow him, unless you are happy just to take him out of action for a while.

Regarding buying staff+boat in the same turn, or any other combo. Of course they can. They are shop items, even if expensive ones. The heroes can buy any or all shop items any time they go to a market (although they do actually have to go to a market!)

They also can, and should, run away from nasty monsters in dungeons and spend time in towns resting, recuperating, shopping and training. It doesn't matter what any OL feels about it, it is what heroes do!

All the above being said.

DO NOT PLAY WITH FEATS

unless you have a house rule that gives the overlord something for there use.

Feats are 100% unbalancing in RtL as currently ruled.

I say this from the heros and the overlords point of view.

Dywnarc said:

Well I am inclined to agree with this, I am reserving judgement untiul further playtesting. The removal of Telekinesis and Bear Tattoo is a fairly massive penalty to the heroes.
Those hero parties that didn't have Telekinesis (or Bear Tattoo) simply weren't playing optimally. It was that good.
I suspect more than anything else it will change the most effective style of hero-play, perhaps to something more interesting, though less efficient. Feats might help to improve the balance back though, even though they seem at first to go too far.

I completely concur that Feats are not to be used in RTL... everything I read out here suggests the heroes will usually win, so making them win more easily seems pointless. I'll certainly be interested in Corbon's playtesting.

I have to wonder about TK and Bear Tattoo tho, are they only so strong cuz players tend to play with "good" parties? Every group I read about out here always seems to include significant numbers of players that have 3 dice in the right categories, with at least one in each group, and then a 2nd mage or melee. It seems like every group includes Tahlia, how is that?

I know our group is certainly guilty, we like to play w heroes we want... but if you did say... a completely random 4-player draw... then are the skills so broken? If you just drew 4 characters at random? You'd end up w some completely awful parties. Parties that might play one round and realize it's hopeless. Say you drew... Scorpion, Lyssa, Aurim, and Eliam. Give them TK and are they then going to win the game? If TK was broken, then it should accomplish that. If those players with TK would not win, then TK isnt really broken, it's choosing good starting heroes then getting TK that's a broken combo.

Anyways just thought I'd throw that out there since I know you've tested a lot of the weaker characters.

-mike

poobaloo said:

My second party was (is) after ToI came out so we HRed that each 'slot' must have at least 1 ToI hero available. Sadly I saw both Nanok and Talia discarded when trying to draw a ToI hero as the 'third' in a slot. Final Party is Silhouette, Okalak, Karnon and Astarra. I had no real tank drawn in the 12 so it is a fast, light party. We also experimented with the Silver start rules and feat rules.

My opponent's current party is Mordrog, Jaes, Landrec and Vyrah - a strong party!

His previous party was Talia, One Fist, Kirga and (I think) Landrec again. He certainly does get good draws!

For us, Landrec is the one that comes up a lot. He's probably the best of the Mages.

I'm still sticking with feats, since I like a challange (I am also aware that it might be a slaughter and not a challange). Might remove them on a vote after the campain or if we prematurely end it...as I said 14-17 up till now, even though they pushed till the third level of the dungeon, where I had the luck of drawing Blizzard the Ice Wyrm as the dungeon level, ate 3 party memebers, first 2 with rage and last one while making a run for the glyph, the dwarf got away because of huge armor, and by no means would I sollow him for the conquest. (killing the wyrm in the process thus calling it even, and beyond that, granting them acces to the rest of the treasure and glyphs on the dungeon level).

StarBurn said:

I don't have the card in front of me, but I'm pretty sure Merick is only -5 for Alric, while Eliza is -3 per "Farrow." I do not believe Merick's cost is reduced for Eliza, so I suggest you get Merick first for 5 and then Eliza for another 5...which I'm pretty sure is how they saw it working out. Beastman with a fast-moving soarer and a 5th lt. at silver could be really good for getting those items moved around. A transport gem could come in handy at some point and I would make sure to get some treachery upgrades so you can make the lt. fights that much harder. Remember you can get at least one dark charm for only half a treachery and the same for a danger.

As for Corbin, I would say DON'T swallow him, since he can still attack with a one-hand melee weapon (or at least a fist) with a red die and all his melee dice and ignore your armor. Swallow an archer or a mage--whichever poses a greater threat, get it dead and move on to the next.

The thing about fleeing after a bunch of restocking:

a)keep in mind that buying potions and treasures is limited on a PER WEEK basis. So...you really can't buy that much stuff. You can, however use the temple multiple times.

b)technically, I believe the rulebook states that in order to flee the heroes have to leave all at the same time. I don't know if it really was intended this way or not, but it reads they have to leave the dungeon all at once and announce that they're fleeing. Once again, though...the most they can really do is check the treasure deck once at tamalir's market rating, buy 2 potions, and heal up at the temple...which I wouldn't really consider all that overpowered of a something to do since you are fleeing the dungeon anyway.

We houseruled that at least one hero has to remain in the dungeon and actually glyph out (or die) the same turn as the flight...which means that you take the risk that all the extra threat, possible spawns, etc. being accumulated could give you one last death before you get out of there...

From what I understand in terms of fleeing, the heroes can choose to flee at anytime all of them are in town. In order to get to the next level, at least 1 hero has to have entered the portal (the other 3 can be in town). If all 4 heros are in town, they don't automatically flee... they have to CHOOSE to flee. They are welcome to stay in town and just let the OL spawn and draw through his deck twice. THEN they automatically flee.

StarBurn said:

Umm...when you say you "ate" 3 party members, 2 with a rage...do you mean that figuratively? Because I'm pretty sure you can only swallow one hero at a time. Only room for one hero in the stomach tile.

Feanor said:

I just went and checked. ToI rulebook:

"A monster may only have one hero placed on its stomach tile at
a time. Once a hero has been swallowed, a second hero cannot
be swallowed until the previously swallowed hero is killed."

Upgrade one of your monsters to Silver ASAP! Once the Heroes get Copper Treasures, all the Copper monsters are incredibly squishy. You need a Silver set to keep things balanced. Also, focus your efforts, don't split monsters up on Heroes, have them ignore the tanks, sidestepping them, and pound the squishy 2CT wizards. And being Beastmen, double or triple up on Master Beastmen and watch the Command stack!

As for Feats, we're house-ruling that you can use feats, but start the game with the ability to draw 0 feat cards. It's a Secret Trainer upgrade. You now choose between +4 Health, +2 Fatigue, or +2 Feats in your hand. Once you can hold Feat cards, then you draw them as normal. And that one girl from ToI that gets a bonus to Feats starts with a 2card sized hand (i.e. she can use Feats right out the door, but not as many as normal). Will report how that goes...

-shnar

shnar said:

I got lucky with the rolls for the chests, they only got gold and one potion the hole dungeon. But they went shoping and drew 3 cards (instead of 2) thanks to apprisal...donno how that should work out. And drew 2 crystal shields and a treasure ceche. So I guess that was maybe lucky as well...since I mostly ignore the dwarf anyway.

But I donno if I should save up for Monsters or just get more Lt's to bring down some towns.

As for stomach issue, I read a rule that stated...All heroes in the stomach roll power dice equal to there health...thus my though of multiple victims...but I luckly didn't break any rules, since the first died when the wyrm tried to swollow. And the second died at the start of his turn in the stomach.

StarBurn said:

Get silver monsters before you do anything else. Your beastmen will thank you for it. The difference between a yellow (1 in 3 chance of doing any damage at all) vs. a green (at least one damage and a 5/6 chance of at least 2...1 in 3 chance of 3..) is big, especially since you can't spend surges on damage. And then the survivability of your monsters is crushing. That master beastman that could previously be killed with a shop axe is gonna take a few hits.

Treachery/lts. are good for next. Treachery will earn you much bigger ct in dungeons as you will get better spawns, traps, etc. Lts., especially merick and then eliza are cheap and worth getting out there soon...especially with your plot.

As for feats, we played our first campaign with feats. We started with one feat per hero, and let them draw at every glyph and while some feats really do suck (like a "blocked" played on a gold deep elf doing 10 damage and dropping a frost token turning into a miss...or a "disarmed" dark charm) they really only help the heroes to have a better chance against the OL. Feats still only happen once and most only affect one attack, one card, one turn, or a few threat. Heroes with invis. potions who are dodging...now there's the REAL crime perpetrated by ToI...88% chance of a miss..wtf?

Did I just read in a post a earlier that command stacks in RtL ?!

Command has always stacked. i.e. if you have two master beastmen and a master naga (in vanilla or with copper/silver) you have command 3...as long as the monster you are attacking with is within 3 spaces of all of them.

Where it gets really nasty is with Gold and diamond level humanoids where the master beastmen have command 2 and 3 respectively. We played one dungeon where the heroes have to stand on 4 encounter markers to unlock a runelocked door and the boss is a master naga and you can also start with a master beastman. I just happened to have a charge and an elite beastman war party in my hand. So while the heroes went after the encounters, I had everything positioned for the naga to run up and open the door, get a shot in and then re-positioned everything so that all my skeles as well as my hellhound were all attacking with +7 range and +7 damage (sadly, my humanoids were only gold at the time or it would've been command 10). It was 2 fends and a miss roll away from a tpk. And...I got the rest of them the next turn and re-killed another one.

I have a very fair Feat System which adds feats giving some tricks to the PC's while not over-balancing their advantage.

Basically each player character starts the campaign with one feat of the type they drew their skill from. The Feat character draws two (As I let her pick two skills to make up for a weaker dice spread and a larger skill pool)

They gain feats by hitting glyphs in dungeons and only the character that hit the glyph draws a feat, not every character. The character who draws two feats though gets two feats when she hits a glyph. This means that PC's don't get a lot of feats but enough so that they can use them to pull an ace out of their seeve when their chips are down. Feats stay on the character permanently until used and the restrction on hand size still exists. Feats however are discarded during the final battle with the overlord. The exception of the Feat Character who may hold onto two feats of her choice.

Anyway so far its worked out well. It acts as a counter-balance aginst the overlord who without feats can easily crush a party with some deadly combos and wrack up Conquest.

Darkfire14 said:

Hey, that's exactly how we use feats in our campaign, and for us it works out pretty nice as well. The heroes do have access to feats to boost them slightly, but the OL can still get in his share of kills so he is still in the lead in a pretty tight and balanced campaign so far.